g Arians, may no doubt have tended to keep them for a time
separate from, and superior to, the subject population, whom they
despised as slaves, and hated as heretics. But when the religious
barrier was removed, the social one soon followed, and so completely did
the conquerors lose their ascendency, that they even surrendered their
own Teutonic tongue for the corrupt Latin of their subjects.

[1] Cardonne's "History of Spain," vol. i. p. 62. "Bien
differens des leurs ancetres etoient alors enerves par les
plaisirs, la douceur du climat; le luxe et les richesses
avoient amolli leur courage et corrompu les moeurs." Cp.
Dunham, vol. i. 157.

But the Goths had certainly not become so degenerate as is generally
supposed. Their Saracen foes did not thus undervalue them. Musa ibn
Nosseyr, the organiser of the expedition into Spain, and the first
governor of that country under Arab rule, when asked by the Khalif
Suleiman for his opinion of the Goths, answered that "they were lords
living in luxury and abundance, but champions who did not turn their
backs to the enemy."[1] There can be no doubt that this praise was well
deserved. Nor is the comparative ease with which the country was
overrun, any proof to the contrary. For that must be attributed to
wholesale treachery from one end of the country to the other. But for
this the Gothic rulers had only themselves to blame. Their treatment of
the Jews and of their slaves made the defection of these two classes of
their subjects inevitable.

The old Spanish chroniclers represent the fall of the Gothic kingdom as
the direct vengeance of Heaven for the sins of successive kings;[2] but
on the heads of the clergy, even more than of the king, rests the guilt
of their iniquitous and suicidal policy towards the Arians[3] and the
Jews. The treachery of Julian,[4] whatever its cause, opened a way for
the Arabs into the country by betraying into their hands Ceuta, the key
of the Straits. Success in their first serious battle was secured to
them by the opportune desertion from the enemy's ranks of the
disaffected political party under the sons of the late king Witiza,[5]
and an archbishop Oppas, who afterwards apostatized; while the rapid
subjugation of the whole country was aided and assured by the hosts of
ill-used slaves who flocked to the Saracen standards, and by the Jews[6]
who hailed the Arabs as fellow-Shemites and deliverers from the hated
yoke of the uncircumci